An Explanation for the Peasants of What the Social-Democrats Want

7. The Class Struggle in the Countryside

Whatis the class struggle? It is a struggle of one part of the
people against the other; a struggle waged by the masses of those who have
no rights, are oppressed and engage in toil, against the privileged, the
oppressors and drones; a struggle of the wage-labourers, or proletarians,
against the property-owners, or bourgeoisie. This great struggle has
always gone on and is now going on in the Russian countryside
too, although not everyone sees it, and although not everyone understands
its significance. In the period of serfdom the entire mass of the peasants
fought against their oppressors, the landlord class, which was protected,
defended, and supported by the tsarist government. The peasants were then
unable to unite and were utterly crushed by ignorance; they had no helpers
and brothers among the urban workers; nevertheless they fought as best
they could. They were not deterred by the brutal persecution of the
government, were not daunted by punitive measures and bullets, and did not
believe the priests, who tried with all their might to prove that serfdom
was approved by Holy Scripture and sanctioned by God (that is what
Metropolitan Philaret actually said!); the peasants rose in rebellion, now
in one place and now in another, and at last the government yielded,
fearing a general uprising of all the peasants.

Serfdomwas abolished, but not altogether. The peasants remained without
rights, remained an inferior, tax-paying, “black”
social-estate, remained in the clutches of serf bondage. Unrest among the
peasants continues; they continue to seek complete, real
freedom. Meanwhile, after the abolition of serfdom, a new class struggle
arose, the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
Wealth increased, railways and big factories were built, the towns grew
still more populous and more luxurious, but all this wealth was
appropriated by a very few, while the people became poorer all the time,
became ruined, starved, and had to leave their homes to go and hire
themselves out for wages. The urban workers started a great, new struggle
of all the poor against all the rich. The urban workers have united in the
Social-Democratic Party and are waging their struggle stubbornly,
staunchly, and solidly, advancing step by step, preparing for the great
final struggle, and demanding political liberty for all the people.

Atlast the peasants, too, lost patience. In the spring of last year,
1902, the peasants of Poltava, Kharkov, and other gubernias rose against
the landlords, broke open their barns, shared the contents among
themselves, distributed among the starving the grain that had been sown
and reaped by the peasants but appropriated by the landlords, and demanded
a new division of the land. The peasants could no longer
bear the endless oppression, and began to seek a better lot. The peasants
decided—and quite rightly so—that it was better to die
fighting the oppressors than to die of starvation without a struggle. But
they did not win a better lot for themselves. The tsarist government
proclaimed them common rioters and robbers (for having taken from the
robber landlords grain which the peasants themselves had sown and
reaped!); the tsarist government sent troops against them as against an
enemy, and the peasants were defeated; peasants were shot down, many were
killed; peas ants were brutally flogged, many were flogged to death; they
were tortured worse than the Turks torture their enemies, the
Christians. The tsar’s envoys, the governors, were the worst torturers,
real executioners. The soldiers raped the wives and daughters of the
peasants. And after all this, the peasants were tried by a court of
officials, were compelled to pay the landlords 800,000 rubles, and at the
trials, those infamous secret trials, trials in a torture chamber,
counsels for the defence were not oven allowed to tell how the peasants
had been ill-treated and tortured by the tsar’s envoys, Governor
Obolensky, and the other servants of the tsar.

Thepeasants fought in a just cause. The Russian working class will always
honour the memory of the martyrs who were shot down and flogged to death
by the tsar’s servants. Those martyrs fought for the freedom and happiness
of the working people. The peasants were defeated, but they will rise
again and again, and will not lose heart because of this first defeat. The
class-conscious workers will do all in their power to inform the largest
possible number of working people in town and country about the peasants’
struggle and to help them prepare for another and more successful
struggle. The class-conscious workers will do all in their power to help
the peasants clearly to understand why the first peasant uprising
(1902) was crushed and what must be done in order to secure victory
for the peasants and workers and not for the tsar’s servants.

Thepeasant uprising was crushed because it was an up rising of an
ignorant and politically unconscious mass, an uprising without clear and
definite political demands, i.e., without the demand for a change
in the political order. The
peasant uprising was crushed because no preparations had been
made for it. The peasant uprising was crushed because the rural
proletarians had not yet allied themselves with the urban
proletarians. Such were the three causes of the peasants’ first
failure. To be successful an insurrection must have a conscious political
aim; preparations must be made for it in advance; it must spread
throughout the whole of Russia and be in alliance with the urban
workers. And every step in the struggle of the urban workers, every
Social-Democratic pamphlet or newspaper, every speech made by a
class-conscious worker to the rural proletarians will bring nearer the
time when the insurrection will be repeated and end in victory.

Thepeasants rose without a conscious political aim, simply because they
could not bear their sufferings any longer, because they did not want to
die like dumb brutes, without resistance. The peasants had suffered so
much from every manner of robbery, oppression, and torment that they could
not but believe, if only for a moment, the vague rumours about the tsar’s
mercy; they could not but believe that every sensible man would regard it
as just that grain should be distributed among starving people, among
those who had worked all their fives for others, had sown and reaped, and
were now dying of starvation, while the “gentry’s” barns were
full to bursting. The peasants seemed to have forgotten that the best land
and all the factories had been seized by the rich, by the landlords and
the bourgeoisie, precisely for the purpose of compelling the starving
people to work for them. The peasants forgot that not only do the priests
preach sermons in defence of the rich class, but the entire tsarist
government, with its host of bureaucrats and soldiers, rises in its
defence. The tsarist government re minded the peasants of that. With
brutal cruelty, the tsarist government showed the peasants what state
power is, whose servant and whose protector it is. We need only remind the
peasants of this lesson more often, and they will easily understand why it
is necessary to change the political order, and why we need
political liberty. Peasant uprisings will have a conscious
political aim when that is understood by larger and larger numbers of
people, when every peasant who can read and write and who thinks for
himself becomes
familiar with the three principal demands which must be fought
for first of all. The first demand—the convocation of a national
assembly of deputies for the purpose of establishing popular elective
government in Russia in place of the autocratic government. The
second demand—freedom for all to publish all kinds of books and
newspapers. The third demand—recognition by law of the
peasants’ complete equal ity of rights with the other social-estates, and
the institution of elected peasant committees with the primary object of
abolishing all forms of serf bondage. Such are the chief and
fundamental demands of the Social-Democrats, and it will now be very easy
for the peasants to understand them, to understand what to begin
with in the struggle for the people’s freedom. When the peasants
understand these demands, they will also understand that long, persistent
and persevering preparations must be made in advance for the
struggle, not in isolation, but together with the workers in the
towns— the Social-Democrats.

Letevery class-conscious worker and peasant rally around himself the most
intelligent, reliable, and fearless comrades. Let him strive to explain to
them what the Social-Democrats want, so that every one of them may
understand the struggle that must be waged and the demands that must be
advanced. Let the class-conscious Social-Democrats begin gradually,
cautiously, but unswervingly, to teach the peasants the doctrine of
Social-Democracy, give them Social-Democratic pamphlets to read and
explain those pamphlets at small gatherings of trustworthy people.

Butthe doctrine of Social-Democracy must not be taught from books alone;
every instance, every case of oppression and injustice we see around us
must be used for this purpose. The Social-Democratic doctrine is one of
struggle against all oppression, all robbery, all injustice. Only he who
knows the causes of oppression and who all his life fights every case
of oppression is a real Social-Democrat. How can this be done? When
they gather in their town or village, class-conscious Social-Democrats
must themselves decide how it must be done to the best advantage of the
entire working class. To show how it must be done I shall cite one or two
examples. Let us suppose that a Social-Democratic worker has come on a
visit to his village, or that some urban Social-Democratic
worker has come to any village. The entire village is in the clutches of
the neighbouring landlord, like a fly in a spider’s web; it has always
been in this state of bondage and cannot escape from it. The worker must
at once pick out the most sensible, intelligent, and trustworthy peasants,
those who are seeking justice and will not be frightened by the first
police agent who comes along, and explain to them the causes of this
hopeless bondage, tell them how the landlords cheated the peasants and
robbed them with the aid of the committees of nobles, tell them how strong
the rich are and how they are supported by the tsarist government, and
also tell them about the demands of the Social-Democratic workers. When
the peasants understand all these simple things they must all put their
heads together and discuss whether it is possible to put up united
resistance to the landlord, whether it is possible to put forward the
first and principal demands (in the same way as the urban workers present
their demands to the factory owners). If the landlord holds one big
village, or several villages, in bondage, the best thing would be to
obtain, through trustworthy people, a leaflet from the nearest
Social-Democratic committee. In the leaflet the Social-Democratic
committee will correctly describe, from the very be ginning, the bondage
the peasants suffer from and formulate their most immediate demands
(reduction of rent paid for land, proper rates, and not half-rates, of pay
for winter hire, or less persecution for damage done by straying cattle or
various other demands). From such a leaflet all peasants who can read and
write will get to know very well what the issue is, and those who cannot
read will have it explained to them. The peasants will then clearly see
that the Social-Democrats support them, that the Social-Democrats condemn
all robbery. The peasants will then begin to under stand what relief, if
only slight, but relief for all that, can be obtained now, at once, if all
stand together, and what big improvements for the whole country they must
seek to obtain by a great struggle in conjunction with the
Social-Democratic workers in the towns. The peasants will then prepare
more and more for that great struggle; they will learn how to find
trustworthy people and how to stand unitedly for their demands. Perhaps
they may sometimes succeed in organising a strike, as the urban workers
do.
True, this is more difficult in the countryside than in the towns, but it
is sometimes possible for all that; in other countries there have been
successful strikes; for instance, in the busy seasons, when the landlords
and rich farmers are badly in need of hands. If the rural poor are
prepared to strike, if an agreement has long been reached about the
general demands, if those demands have been explained in leaflets, or
properly explained at meetings, all will stand together, and the landlord
will have to yield, or at least put some curb on his greed. If the strike
is unanimous and is called during the busy season, the landlord, and even
the authorities with their troops, will find it hard to do any
thing—time will be lost, the landlord will be threatened with ruin,
and he will soon become more tractable. Of course, strikes are a new
thing, and new things do not come off well at first. The urban workers,
too, did not know. how to fight unitedly at first; they did not know what
demands to put forward in common; they simply went out to smash machinery
and wreck a factory. But now the workers have learned to conduct a united
struggle. Every new job must first be learned. The workers now understand
that immediate relief can be obtained only if they stand together; mean
while, the people are getting used to offering united resistance and are
preparing more and more for the great and decisive struggle. Similarly,
the peasants will learn to stand up to the worst robbers, to be united in
their demands for some measure of relief and to prepare gradually,
persistently, and everywhere for the great battle for freedom. The number
of class-conscious workers and peasants will constantly grow, and the
unions of rural Social-Democrats will become stronger and stronger; every
case of bondage to the land lord, of extortion by the priest, of police
brutality and bureaucratic oppression, will increasingly serve to open the
eyes of the people, accustom them to putting up united resistance and to
the idea that it is necessary to change the political order by force.

Atthe very beginning of this pamphlet we said that at the present time
the urban workers come out into the streets and squares and publicly
demand freedom, that they inscribe on their banners and cry out:
“Down with the autocracy!” The day will soon come when the urban
workers will rise not
merely to march shouting through the streets, but for the great and final
struggle; when the workers will declare as one man: “We shall win
freedom, or die in the fight!”; when the places of the hundreds who have
been killed, fallen in the fight will be taken by thousands of fresh and
still more resolute fighters. And the peasants, too, will then rise all
over Russia and go to the aid of the urban workers, will fight to the end
for the freedom of the workers and peasants. The tsar’s hordes will be
unable to withstand that onslaught. Victory will go to the working people,
and the working class will march along the wide, spacious road to the
liberation of all working people from any kind of oppression. The working
class will use its freedom to fight for socialism!